Freespire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Freespire | |
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 A screenshot of Freespire RC1 |
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| Website | www.freespire.org |
|---|---|
| Company/ developer |
Linspire, Inc. and the Freespire community |
| OS family | Linux |
| Source model | Free software/open source with optional proprietary software/closed source components |
| Latest stable release | 2.0 / August 7, 2007 |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Supported platforms | x86, AMD64[1] |
| Kernel type | Monolithic kernel |
| Default user interface | KDE |
| License | Free/open source licenses (mostly GPL) with optional proprietary components |
| Working state | Current |
Freespire is a community-driven Linux distribution which is composed entirely of free/open source software, while providing users the choice of including proprietary software including multimedia codecs, device drivers and application software as they see fit.
Freespire is originally derived from Linspire, a commercial operating system based on Ubuntu, and now forms the base from which new releases of Linspire are derived.
Contents |
[edit] History
In August 2005, a distribution Live CD based on Linspire's source pools named Freespire hit the web by accident.[2] This distribution was created by Andrew Betts and was not produced or released by Linspire Inc. Freespire was confused by some users to be an actual product from Linspire, and at the request of Linspire the distribution adopted a development codename Squiggle[3] and began looking for a new name. Linspire then, on the back of the generated publicity, offered users a "free Linspire" (purchase price discounted to $0) by using the coupon code "Freespire" until September 9, 2005. Squiggle OS is no longer in active development.
On April 24, 2006, Linspire announced its own project named "Freespire".[4] The new Freespire distribution was announced by then Linspire President and former CEO Kevin Carmony. This follows to the model of Fedora Core being supported by Red Hat and the community since 2003. Novell had also started a similar community project by the name of openSUSE for its SUSE Linux product line in the second half of 2005.
[edit] Features
The distribution is a Debian-based, community-driven and -supported project tied to the commercial Linspire distribution. Freespire includes previously proprietary elements from Linspire, such as the Click N' Run (CNR) client, while other elements, which Linspire itself licenses but does not own, like the Windows Media Audio compatibility libraries, remain proprietary/closed source. Consequently, there are two versions of Freespire, one with the proprietary/closed source libraries, and one, called Freespire OSS Edition, that includes only open-source components. Freespire has a number of in-house programs written in Haskell and O'Caml, such as its ISO image builder, its hardware detection and autoconfiguration, its package autobuilder and "Debian library", and also the programs managing the CGI.
Unlike Linspire version 5 and earlier, Freespire does not enable the root account by default. Instead, it gives sudo rights to all members of the admin group. However, some people claim that this is not a security improvement due to the fact that the admin user can become superuser without entering a password.[5]
[edit] Releases
| Version | Release date | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 Beta 1 (0.69) | July 12, 2006[6] | First beta release | |
| 1.0 Beta 2 (0.76) | July 20, 2006[7] | Second beta release | |
| 1.0 Release Candidate (1.0.2) | July 28, 2006[8] | Release candidate | |
| 1.0 (1.0.13) | August 4, 2006[9] | Public release based on Debian, Linux kernel 2.6.14, and KDE 3.3.2[10] | |
| 2.0 Beta (1.3.52) | June 26, 2007[11] | First 2.0 Beta | |
| 2.0 RC (1.9.0) | July 10, 2007[11] | Release candidate | |
| 2.0 | August 7, 2007[12] | Public release based on Ubuntu 7.04, Linux kernel 2.6.20, and KDE 3.5.6.[13] with the built-in CNR 7 plug-in | |
| 2.0.3 | September 24, 2007 | Fixes[14] | Bugfix release |
| 2.0.8 | November 30, 2007 | Fixes and Beta CNR plug-in[15] |
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ HCL Processors - Freespire
- ^ Wasn't there a Freespire project released towards the end of 2005? Is this the same project?. Freespire FAQ. Freespire.org. Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
- ^ Squiggle OS website. Retrieved on 2006-04-27.
- ^ Newsforge: Linspire launches Freespire, open-sources CNR. Retrieved on 2006-04-25.
- ^ Criticism of Freespire's use of sudo.
- ^ Release Notes/0.69 - Freespire
- ^ Release Notes/0.76 - Freespire
- ^ Release Notes/1.0.2 - Freespire
- ^ Release Notes - Freespire
- ^ Freespire 1.0: first impressions :: Linux Format :: The website of the UK's best-selling Linux magazine
- ^ a b Freespire 2.0 Schedule - Freespire
- ^ Download Freespire - Freespire
- ^ Freespire Roadmap - Freespire
- ^ Freespire 2.0.3 Released
- ^ Freespire 2 - Freespire
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